THE CHARACTERSDR BROWNING: VINCENT PRICEUrbane, well meaning Dr Frankenstein wannabee who has people murdered to create a super race. Dissolved in a bath containing the residue of Trevor’s underpants.FREMONT: SIR CHRISTOPHER LEEBritish government sinister minister on seemingly friendly terms with the enemy. MAJOR HEINRICH BENEDEK: PETER CUSHINGMinister in the East German – Soviet Russian like government. Pinched to death.KONRATZ / KONRAD: MARSHALL JONESCareer minded killer who murders his way to the top. Has no idea how his name should be pronounced or written. Dissolved in the residue bath.DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT BELLAVER: ALFRED MARKSPoliceman in charge of the Vampire Murders case ~ pinched to death.

CAPTAIN SALLIS: PETER SALLISCredited as Schweitz but the venerable doctor cannot come to his aid. Head of the totalitarian state ~ killed by Gromit with a revved up version of the neck pinch.KEITH: MICHAEL GOTHARDThe aforementioned vampire killer ~ dissolved after leaving his wrenched-off hand behind on a car's fender.DR DAVID SOREL: CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWSDogged investigator of the vampire murders ~ wears the same pair of trousers throughout the film, says “Garbage!” when he mouths the word “Crap!”.

PROFESSOR KINGSMILL: KENNETH BENDAThe medical examiner in the case ~ knows what the fastest transition in the world is ~ and more concerned about his ruined furniture than his dead staff.

LESSONS LEARNED

A good clout across the face will kill you and so will a revved up version of the Vulcan Neck Pinch.Attending regional meetings can be the death of you. Literally.Never reach into a tank that someone has just dissolved himself in.A good policeman can actually smell headquarters.In a totalitarian government, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.Nurses are impervious to scalpels.An oxygen tank is a good hand removal weapon.Water can help with an acid burn.When you combine it with a pair of pliers, a tasty chicken drumstick can be a great torture device.Continuity errors can ruin a great car chase.An exit visa does not always guarantee an exit.You have to sometimes give criminals a hand.Closed-circuit cameras can film intruders like a movie camera would.If you have made your name in comedy, do not assume that you will always be appearing in a comedy.Working with animals entitles you to keep an acid tank in your outbuildings.

STUFF TO WATCH FOR

57: If they don’t stop pausing the action for the credits, this poor bugger’s never going to get any where.5:30: And you can take that welcome and stick it up your……..6:20: Oops..... 7:00: RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST PETER SALLIS' NECK!7:21: Hang on….. did he just say “Life extinct”? 12:00: DS Bellaver must be a damn good cop if he can smell a police station.12:38: This “police station” appears to be someone’s very cramped house. 12:40: Great: all we need now is a drunk singing in the corner: oh, there he is. 12:53: Would someone please remind Alfred Marks that he’s in a horror film, not a comedy?15:40: Ummmm…..The guy in the next bed wants to buy your shoes……. 28:02: RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST PETER CUSHING'S NECK!29:42: Gobble, gobble, one of us.......29:55: Why is everyone getting a newspaper? 31:23: He’s washing up but it’s 31 minutes into the movie and he hasn’t changed his pants yet.34:09: This band only knows one tune: it's called "I Only Got One Shirt And Someone's Stole It".34:44: That’s about the fifth time that laugh was used on the soundtrack.36:38: His name is actually Michael, lady.39:22 ~ 44:07: The continuity errors in this car chase... oy....40:12: Dr Sorel’s so good at his job, he made the victim in the car disappear altogether.50:30: Well, let’s give the man a hand for that!52:41: Hey, watch out for the…..oh, never mind.54:12: That’s what happens when you jump into a tank filled with the residue of my underpants.1:02:31: His mouth said “Crap!” but the soundtrack said “Garbage!”1:08:00: Oh dear: he's stopped being grouchy. He's going to die.1:11:00: Hey man, this music be way cool and be way funky but it doesn’t fit this film!1:14:00: Amazing how those freezers look like they're made of cheap wood and glass.1:15:16: I thought he was going to find my undies in that cold storage unit. But a human head’s OK, I guess.1:19:00: This film must have really given the SA censors palpitations with lines like that one.1:28:00: The Trevor’s undies residue bath? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!1:29:30: Yikes ~ is he one of them too?

NOTABLE QUOTES

Konratz: “Browning, you have been uncommonly stupid!”Bellaver: "He's not supposed to bloody well like it. Just get him, will you?"Fremont: "It is too late now."Bellaver: "Oh, hello, Caruso's back. Shut up, will you?"Dr Browning: "Yes, I'm a composite too. And so are both of them."Bellaver: "How long have these things been around? They're curling up like Charley Chaplin's boots, they are."Dr Sorel: "Crap! Garbage! What about the other murder?"Bellaver: "Trouble is, there's no motive for a sex crime apart from the sex."Dr Browning: “You’ve turned every scientific advance into a weapon: you won’t have me or my work!”Bellaver: “Come on son, don’t be so bloody stupid!”Bellaver: “That bloody chicken wasn’t killed, it died of old age!”Keith: “Are you lost?”Bellaver: "You'll never wash it away, son."Bellaver: "Now you won't bite through that, chummy. A pity they don't hang them anymore."Benedek: “Will you listen to them? They sound happy enough.”Bellaver: “You made many runs today? Who are you?”Dr Browning: “She’s a composite. Like Keith.”Bellaver: "My heart bleeds for him. Who the bloody hell has?"Bellaver: "She hasn't done anything. Someone's done her."Konratz: “Or if you prefer, I’ll have him killed.”Bellaver: “His hand. He tore it off getting loose of our handcuffs.”Dr Sorel: "Is it all over, sir?"Fremont: "It's only just beginning."

THE PLOT

A jogger gets off a bus in London and proceeds to go for his daily run, pausing every so often to interrupt the credits and the credits pause every so often to let him jog on, until the aforementioned credits constant interruption cause him to collapse in frustration. Waking up in what appears to be a sinister hospital, the jogger has his memory jogged by a mute nurse who tells him in no words that the guy in the bed next to him wants to buy his shoes. The jogger wonders why, until he pulls back the sheets to discover the head or rather the foot of the problem.

A quick cut and we are seemingly in what looks like the then East Germany ~ wonderful shots with the DP squeezed into the back of the car ~ with someone returning home to the ignominy of having his car’s engine compartment and the car’s rear and undersides being checked. Several anxious moments later ~ underscored by weird music and a foley artist wearing high heel shoes ~ the prodigal son returns home officially ~ no cavity search required. On walking into his superior’s office, we meet Wallace ~ minus Gromit ~ shaving in a mirror. This is, according to the credits and the IMDB, Captain Schweitz but everyone calls him Captain Sallis. To further confuse both the issue and the situation, the prodigal son is named Konratz but everyone calls him Konrad. So, Wallace shaving, minus Gromit and minus cheese. After accidentally letting his boss know that he knows more than he knows that people know that he knows he is knowingly allowed to know, Konrad/tz knows that he is in deep sh*t so he knowingly kills his know-it-all boss with a revved up version of the Vulcan neck pinch.

We then jump clear across several borders where a murder victim is lying sprawled in a field, attended to by policemen and EMT personnel, including one idiot from the former who pronounces the victim dead with the words “Life extinct”. The Detective Superintendent in charge charges off to the victim’s home where he confronts her employer, the urbane and pleasant Dr Browning who is surprisingly not browned off at being disturbed so early in the morning but appears to be deeply upset at the DS’s forthright manner at telling him that his employee has been assaulted, raped, murdered and then drained of her blood.

The DS is the Detective Superintendent, not our DS.

On arrival back at the police station ~ which looks uncomfortably like someone’s very cramped house ~ the DS and his staff are welcomed back to the sonorous sounds of Jack, slumped in a corner and attempting to sing while drunk after he posted a pic of himself with a mullet on our site. Ordered to shut up by the DS, the action then moves to another corner of the house where the DS complains about the food on offer and meets up with the ME’s assistant, Dr Sorel, also known as the PM.

PM ?? No, I dont know what that stands for either. I certainly wouldn't stand for it.

When we meet Dr Sorel, he is playing with his balls ~ i.e. a cricket ball ~ and gives them the bad news: he is not the Prime Minister, even though his professional initials are PM and that he is too lazy to write the coroner’s report down, presenting it on a state of the art reel to reel recorder, which DS Bellaver promptly switches off, leaving Dr Sorel to declare his innings with the newly departed.

Whoopsie: back to the un-named country where a couple are desperately attempting to escape a tyrannical government which orders its’ women to dress in early junk shop discards and its’ men in very skimpy shorts pulled all the way up the crack of doom. One rather one – sided gun battle later, the guy is shot in the knee (great aim, guys) and his lady friend is tortured with a tasty chicken drumstick and a pair of pliers by Konrad/tz. Her scream takes us to a fashionable club where everyone mingles and laughs are used over and over on the soundtrack ~ there is a band playing but no one appears to be singing, let alone the lead singer. We meet a young man in the crowd who is looking for some female companionship which he promptly finds, driving her off somewhere whereupon he attacks, brutalizes and kills her, after tenderly stroking her face first.

Back we go to the un-named country again where Konratz/rad’s kinky torture techniques have reached the ears of Peter Cushing, in the guise of Major Heinrich Benedek who confronts his junior official, sacking him and who promptly gets the same treatment that Captain Sallis did, i.e. the affectionate Vulcan pinch of death. Cut to a government office where Minister Fremont is presiding over an important meeting of (a) who gets to smoke in his office, (b) who gets to cough in that office and which poor bugger gets a newspaper.

Riggggghhhhhtttt……….. back to the hospital we go where Dr Sorel – still wearing the same clothes as he did at the start of the film – is washing up after performing a postmortem on the latest victim and bearing the insults of DS who tells him “You’ll never wash it away, son.” I would assume that he is talking about the stink of death, other than the pong emanating from the doctor’s unwashed trousers.

A trap is set: one of the police officers is sent as a honey trap bait for the killer who might just be in the club where the band only knows one song, no one knows how to dance correctly and the same laughs are used over and over on the sound track. She meets up with a guy played by Michael Gothard who denies that his name is Michael and because of her revealing his true identity, proceeds to suck her blood out of her wrist, until the police gang up on him. He promptly beats the seven colors of s**t out of them, fleeing in his car and is aided and abetted by dozens of continuity errors, not to mention some crazy-ass stunt driving.

Cornered by Bellaver, the doctor and other PC Plod types, the killer stuns himself rolling down a quarry cliff and is handcuffed to a car’s bumper which is no deterrent to him escaping as he very quickly yanks his hand off at the wrist and leads them on another chase which abruptly ends when he jumps into a tank containing the post wash residue of my underpants, dissolving himself and part of a luckless cop’s hand and arm.Hahhhhh, hahhhhh, I warned you all about the danger my undies would and do pose to society but you would not listen!!!! hahhhh, haaahhhh……….. hah hah hah hah hah……..URK!

Luckily, he has given them a hand which doesn’t deliver any applause but gets them to conclude that this hand is not of this world and neither is the nurse who breaks in a few hours later to steal it, killing another nurse who tries to stop her. Back to the un-named country where a Minister attempts to go to a regional meeting (i.e. leave the country) and ends up getting blown to smithereens in his car ~ sort of a government approved assassination ordered by Kornazt who has now ascended to the top of the sewer level in this particular government.

Oy: back to London again as Minister Fremont takes his wandering eyes off his secretary’s pins long enough to answer a call from Kronzat and they arrange to meet in Trafalgar Square. While the pigeons crap all over, the two come to an agreement over the downed spy plane pilot (forgot about him, didn’t I?) and the investigation into the so-called Vampire Murders is closed, leading to Bellaver and Sorel having a lover’s quarrel and Bellaver’s demise at the hand of one Professor Weiss, alias Kozrant.

Dr Sorel and his police officer friend travel to Dr Browning’s house and his friend is kidnapped right out of the car while Sorel searches for the tank of acid. Calling in to the cramped house police headquarters, Sorel is informed that Bellaver has succumbed to the revved up Vulcan Nerve Pinch and that he should lay off the good Dr Browning. Taking this advice seriously, Sorel infiltrates Browning’s house and nearly browns his own pants when he discovers an operating theatre and freezers containing the various body parts of the luckless jogger, including a certain body part in the last freezer which brings affairs to a head.

After a laborious and slightly blasphemous discussion with the doctor, Sorel is overjoyed to hear that (a) he will witness an operation and that (b) his friend will be the brain donor. He remembers the words of the Hippocratic Oath and after turning into a hippo, threatens the doctor with a scalpel and later stabs the nurse with it, all to no avail. Ktranoz enters Browning’s home, slaps the snot out of his butler and drowns his nurse in the acid tank, an act which buys him the whole can of whoop ass from Browning, who dumps him in the tank. Dr Sorel and his groggy friend escape, only to be met at the door and given a dressing down by Minister Fremont, who psychically puts Dr Browning in the tank, turning it into a Jacuzzi.

Fremont is asked “Is it all over, sir?” to which he enigmatically replies “It’s only just beginning” to Sorel and his friend. Grins all round, movie ends.

« Last Edit: September 04, 2013, 03:57:13 AM by Trevor »

Logged

As time goes by, you will seeThat we're going to be free, you and meWe'll touch the skyCan you see in your mind's eye that we are oneWe're all the same and life is just a simple game.

I recall reading about it in Famous Monsters-and then seeing it at the Strand. A fun afternoon for a 10 year old!

I love the magazine cover, but I have to agree with Trevor. The whole thing with the supposedly hidden fascist type government...WTF? It was like they were shooting some other film and decided to stick those scenes in because Cushing was under contract or something.

The highlight of the film was them finding the guy's hand still hanging from the handcuffs on the fender of the car.

This film was a LOT more fun when I was a kid because I was just waiting for the next gruesome thing to happen. Now, I just wonder what the hell they were smoking.

A must see film for horror fans, for, while all three have no scenes together, it is one of the few horror films in which Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing, all appear in the same film.

I recently purchased this as part of a MIDNITE MOVIES double feature DVD. The other movie in the set is "The Oblong Box." Ya gotta love this stuff!

Indeed you DO, my friend, it's the stuff of late-night legends on the old boob tube. many late nights as a youth were spent by me in front of the TV, watching price, Cushing and Lee in slightly snowy UHF reception pulling in old horror movies from some obscure public TV station is some little town I never heard of, Sure, DVD is cool but don't ya' miss the old days when pre-cable late-night TV ruled?

I recently purchased this as part of a MIDNITE MOVIES double feature DVD. The other movie in the set is "The Oblong Box." Ya gotta love this stuff!

Indeed you DO, my friend, it's the stuff of late-night legends on the old boob tube. many late nights as a youth were spent by me in front of the TV, watching price, Cushing and Lee in slightly snowy UHF reception pulling in old horror movies from some obscure public TV station is some little town I never heard of, Sure, DVD is cool but don't ya' miss the old days when pre-cable late-night TV ruled?

Exactly! I grew up in Lorain, Ohio (25 miles west of Cleveland), and during the summer especially, it was great to pick up horror / sci-fi films not only from Channels 3, 5, 8, 19, 43, and 61 from Cleveland, but also 23 from Akron, 11, 13, and 24 from Toledo, 7, 20, 50, and 62 from Detroit, and 10 from Toronto, if the "skip" was REALLY good.

Logged

If it's true what they say, that GOD created us in His image, then why should we not love creating, and why should we not continue to do so, as carefully and ethically as we can, on whatever scale we're capable of?

The choice is simple; refuse to create, and refuse to grow, or build, with care and love.

I recently purchased this as part of a MIDNITE MOVIES double feature DVD. The other movie in the set is "The Oblong Box." Ya gotta love this stuff!

Indeed you DO, my friend, it's the stuff of late-night legends on the old boob tube. many late nights as a youth were spent by me in front of the TV, watching price, Cushing and Lee in slightly snowy UHF reception pulling in old horror movies from some obscure public TV station is some little town I never heard of, Sure, DVD is cool but don't ya' miss the old days when pre-cable late-night TV ruled?

Those days were great. The first time I saw PHANTASM was an "edited for television" version on late-night TV.

Logged

"Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the hell alone."

This was one of the films I took my future wife to see, I believe it was a Vincent Price double feature with Cry of the Banshee as the second film. It was about this time she realized my taste in movies ran to what she calls "Class Z" crap.

Logged

Science claims that hydrogen, because there is so much of it, is the building block of the universe, I dispute this, there is plenty more stupidity, and that is the building block of the universe. Frank Zappa